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Official Feedback Thread: Tiamat Difficulty Changes Play with the Devs event
panderus
Member, NW_CrypticDev, Cryptic Developer Cryptic Developer › Posts: 1,007 Cryptic Developer
Hello all,
Please post your feedback about the difficulty on the Tiamat changes here. Please refrain from commenting about lag, other class balance issues and content.
Lets focus purely on the difficulty changes for Tiamat.
Thanks for playing!
Please post your feedback about the difficulty on the Tiamat changes here. Please refrain from commenting about lag, other class balance issues and content.
Lets focus purely on the difficulty changes for Tiamat.
Thanks for playing!
Post edited by panderus on
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The damage seems adequate coming from monsters, however there was a couple oddballs:
[Combat (Self)] Erinyes deals 3350649 (4433446) Physical Damage to you with Devestating Opportunist.
For example.
My guess is it will be average difficulty, except the heads phase will be extremely difficult and require alot of DPS to complete. Which will cause people to try to get together and get those 'Elite' runs where people are coordinating with really strong DPS and leave out the majority of players with failed runs because of lack of DPS during head phases
There was also a problem with the lightning AoE red zone. It hit me when I was visually outside it.
The breath damage is a little excessive IMO, the green poison one was hitting me 35k per second, you don't even have the time to move to a green gem when you're in (or near, sometimes you're visually outside but still take damage) you just die. I think what really does it is the speed of the damage, if it was every 3 seconds it would be more reasonable than you blink and you're dead kind of thing. Also leaves time for people going back from death or another head have tiem to run up to a gem safe zone without instantly dying.
Aside from that, the fight is a big improvement already, but needs more tweaking to be reasonable.
Side note: I Really appreciate your effort in increasing communication and asking the community of players opinion about things such as tiamat's difficulty. I will continue to provide feedback for as long as you keep this trend for certain. I think it's going down the right path - keep it up like this, it's a good move, and I would like to see more 'events' or things like this happening in the future.
Thanks for reading
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My guess is that was the doing of Feytouched enchantment users. Until you fix it, you won't have any solid data. Because not only it increases mob damage but allows players to deal damage in the millions too.
So, my thoughts on the encounter:
- The summoners part was fairly easy - they went down in about the same flurry of damage as they would have pre-mod 6.
- Defending the clerics was about right. Yes, at times the devils hit hard, the damage was manageable and I was able to do enough damage to them that along with my team we were able to keep them off the clerics. (For the record here, I was wearing Level 70 Grim PvP gear, which gave me a total HP of 82K, 13% damage resistance and 42% Deflect chance)
- The dragon heads ... I'm not quite sure how to rate this one. We had a pretty well geared group, but we didn't have the DPS to take down all the heads. Part of the reason for this was several long periods of lag which popped up (Which happened as one of the Paladins was using Prism ....). Without the lag could we have taken the heads down? Maybe. Personally I didn't feel I was doing a lot of damage to Tiamat despite 40% resistance ignored and a perfect Terror enchant.
- Our group was well above the 1800 Total Item Level you have proposed for the fight and we still failed. I'm not really sure there is much point in bringing a character with an 1800 item level to Tiamat unless you plan to just AFK by the campfire and AFK for the losing rewards. I think there are 2 solutions to this:
1) Raise the total Item Level to at least 2K, if not 2400. This is a dragon Goddess and should be considered well above a tier 2 anyhow.
2) Remove the rewards for failure. I know this will be unpopular, but on live there are always a significant number who go AFK just hoping for a dragon egg or the like as their losing reward. The end result is all of us fail because a few did not contribute. Either that or require a certain score to earn a reward.
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Pandora's Misfits Guild Leader
What gear are you wearing? Level 70 gear or level 60 epics? Not having the extra HP from the new gear can certainly cause this.
In addition, we have started to re-examine "why level 60+ is difficult" and currently believe we may tune HOW it is difficult to lean more towards less damaging enemies and instead having increased HPs. This is still all being tested and evaluated however.
I'm wearing ilvl 130-135 epic lvl 70 gears with slightly above 105k hp and ~25% DR and perfect negation enchantment.
Now... on to Tiamat. I took my GF in... she is my main character. Full Burning Elemental Set... Mostly R8 enchants, iLevel 3420. Power 8.9K, Def 10.4k, 121K HP's, DR +42.5%, -38.8% RIg.... not an "uber" character by any means, but neither is she barely qualified to be in there.
Phase 1 - Defeating the Summoners: This went just about like all the Tiamat fights did in Mod 5. We went for the green gem, finished it off quickly, then to the black to help there. It looked like the other groups did about as well, and went just as quickly as we did.
Phase 2 - Defend the Clerics: We did fairly well here too. We took the far left cleric and kept everything off of her. I used combinations of Bull Charge, Frontline Surge, Enforced Threat, and Indomitable Strength to keep the devils at bay while everyone else killed them.
Phase 3 - Tiamat: The heads seemed to go down very slowly... we did the standard "zerg" style attack... started at black, and barely got into the second head by the end of the first round. By the time we ran out of time (yes... our instance failed) ... we had 4 heads weakened and ready to be finished off, and had just finished off the white.
Observations: I took very little damage during this. But then again, I was buffed by paladins and clerics around me, and I am running the new Greater Negation Enchant ... which seems to be doing its job. I also soak damage better than other classes as a GF. I did see lots of bodies piling up around me during the Tiamat phases... so damage was being done by her for sure.
I also am sure, by the way we melted the heralds before we went in, the group was far above average in gear. Every enchant I saw was perfect or better. One player said he had 35K power when asked. And yet, we were unable to finish her off. Is that a bad thing? Not sure... maybe not.
Overall I enjoyed it. I think it is above the ability of most to beat it, and will take some expert timing and a lot of DPS to pull it off... maybe more than the "average" group of 25 can muster.
Oh... and by the way... I finished in the #25 spot. Dead last. Right where a GF should be.
Pandora's Misfits Guild Leader
Didn't win it, but overall seemed OK.
Couple issues for me.
(1) 0 damage off and on during the fight, I had 0s filling my screen
happend most on dragons, but also on mobs.
(2) I got rooted and coundn't move without relogging, happened after using a few mass res scrolls in the acid AOE on the green head.
Thanks devs!
I like BOTH of these ideas... especially #2. No win? You get nothing.
Pandora's Misfits Guild Leader
Load out templars/Binding oath/Relentless Av
Daily's SoF/DP
With DC sigili at legendary I can pretty much have both daily's running all the time. (WAI?)
I was on left for clerics phase.
So Cleric's i can just stand there in any situation, add's/dragons breath nothing bothers my toon.
I got all the add's focused on myself, and other players burnt them easily.
Head phase went well in our instance, 2 heads 10% 1st phase, 2 more 2nd phase.
Last phase only white head left and 4x10%, fininshed with "killed the queen thing" but animation didnt fininsh so no chest - fix that ofc pls.
My concern tho is the ability of my paladin to maintain both daily's with almost 100% uptime.
If this isn't WAI then it would have gone a lot different imo.
I'm guesing this kept more players alive than if i only had 1 daily up.
Also, 80 linus for last 2 boons, don't make it too hard to get these.
People have suggested in the past you get a Linus in the chest if you win and have a key - a really good idea.
This would give everyone the chance to halve the number of Tiamat runs but spend more Zen to do it - we want this yeh?
HP of heads would be better if a bit lower, or same problems as m5, eg Tiamat18k/Tiamat20k chat channels
You want people to get this part of the ToD campain done then play the reworked dungeons as they come out, not be stuck in Tiamat for months for casuals.
Thanx for the event.
As a GF tank, regarding this particular comment and overall mob difficulty: Take away mob ArPen. Please. Biggest part of the problem isn't the actual damage of the mobs- though that is HUGE, dropping them to 0 ArPen means a good GF stacking DR can mitigate 60-80% of it 24/7 without guard- the rewards of being a tank, and a good reason to keep one around. You're also creating unbalanced situations for classes with penetrable DR versus 'extra layers', a mess to balance.
Concerning specifically Tiamat, as a decent tank, the adds are very manageable- then again, they were before the tweak. The head HP, however, could stand to be dropped to 75-85% of its current, and DR being lowered to 40-45% would also greatly help, seeing how ArPen for players is the one stat that is still sharply curved and fairly difficult to stack.
I usually like to agree with Denvald, but with the new entry standards, people need to learn that 'red is dead' and 'so is green'. The lightning misplacement bug has been long-standing, and does need fixed; green head, people need to learn that the defensive buff 'sticks' and leapfrog gem shields in an orderly fashion.
Last but not least- you said to not bring class balance into this, but seriously- it's a 25-person heroic encounter. Like it or not, if classes aren't balanced and viable, those less viable classes being present reduce a raid's chance of success. Some things that would seriously boost the completability of Temple of Tiamat are class balance issues- Control Wizard power versus control-immune enemies, for one. I personally believe it needs a slight boost- it won't effect much in PvP, but when all you have is CWs for boss DPS.. Similarly, the single-target power of the Scourge Warlock needs to go up drastically; it was the ideal boss burner and a big part of what carried Tiamat raids, TT aside. What this means is 2 of your 4 main DPS dealers are severely inhibited- players from these classes (particularly CWs) make up about a third of all players in a Tiamat raid, and THAT is what makes things so difficult! When between 7 and 10 of your teammates do awful DPS to Tiamat heads, it does't matter how quickly you clear adds. You won't beat Tiamat.
To summarize, you're wanting to take a single-focus approach to a multipronged issue. Disable the Dragon Queen until you've balanced the 'core statistics' for mod 6 mobs and corrected the issues with all classes. Tiamat tuning is highly dependent on player power, gear availability, etc. When the high-DPS classes are LOW-POWERED and good gear is VERY DIFFICULT to obtain (and cannot be purchased from another player), Tiamat has to be weak or the threshold has to block a massive number of players for a reasonable success rate. Otherwise, it's just an exploiter's playground, for those who use bugs to win and those who just camp for handouts on loss. In other words, don't work backward. Fix the GAME, fix the CLASSES, then fix what is for all intents and purposes the FINAL BOSS. Until then, lock it- please. The only ones benefitting from it are flat-out cheaters.
I was using tabbed new CW skill (Imprisonment) to make us immune from heads damage.
Result: Heads was also immune to our damage and thus, we failed.
Manifest: Rework this skill to be usable. Best give us Fireball.
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I was in the same run as Panderus and the other Dev with my squishy little 1800-ish ilvl DC. My goal was to break the instance with my Astral Seal.. didn't happen. :-D I died twice, once at a head (thanks for the revive) and one of the Erinyes one-shotted me (I apologize that I didn't think to turn on combat log). But it was more than a 52k hit.
Otherwise, the fight to protect the clerics went swimmingly well. Seemed to take awhile for our cleric to cast her spell, and nothing got even close to her.. the one monster that got through the characters standing on the spawn point got quickly Sunburst back into the fray. I stood back and kept dropping Hallowed Ground and Astral Shield on them. And, of course, spamming the Astral Seal; when my Divinity was full, gave them four blasts of Daunting Light. Seemed to be a good combo.
The heads seemed to be about like Mod 5 to me, but it's hard to tell, honestly. I was so focused on buffing the DPSers and keeping the mobs off them that I wasn't really paying as much attention as I maybe should have been.
Pretty sure that the length of time the clerics took to cast seemed longer than Mod 5...
Thank you for the opportunity.
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You can clearly witness the severe performance issues leading to less than 1 Frame per Second at times. I have a GTX590, 16gb RAM etc so something still is majorly flawed. Also you get another PoV regarding the current mechanic of Imprisonment on Tab.
If needed for further analysis, I logged the whole fight with ACT and wouldn't mind sharing the log file.
The Demons during the Cleric phase can 1 shot anybody but then they were easily contolled by a couple of Wizards and a Ranger. I have no issue with the damage they do as long as teamwork is applied.
During the Dragon Head battle, I stayed in the back to avoid the nasty teeth. I was doing great 5-6 digit damage for most part but then some Pally's Prism would kick in and everyone freezes. Prism, outside a dungeon, has become the Bane of Fun. Seriously need to do something with that feat. The 2nd issue was that the dragon heads would all of a sudden become immune to damage. Now we know why:
The spell works like it's suppose too.
Other than that, Id say we could have beaten Tiamat.
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Um, that needs to be fixed pronto.
And it was a CW complaining about DC's Geas working on bosses...
This is a major cause of lag on your machine.... ACT will lock your PC hard when there is lots going on near you. Tiamat would fall into this category.
With all due respect, but that is not really the issue with the difficulty from my experience and from what i hear from others. Increasing HP and decreasing damage will just lead to group instances with 5 dps again, while solo content for support characters that deal low damage will become even more of a chore.
Difficulty should ideally come from smarter AI, not higher numbers on their stats. I know you may not have the ressources to make that a reality, however there are other ways. Most of the encounters in the old campaign areas were designed with the old difficulty in mind. There are already support and control enemies in the game. In my opinion, if someone were to go through these old encounters and revaluate their composition for the new damage and health enemies have now, it would do much more for a balanced game that everyone can enjoy.
I also agree with arakk about the enemies' armor penetration being to high, at least on minion enemies. Some black dragonclaws in Well of Dragons can punch right through my Guardians armor and do bonus damage. Those should be trash mobs and not a dangerous challenge on their own imo.
Tiamat is just the tip of the iceberg in this regard. Enemies in that encounter are just health-sponges with huge damage spikes. I like that you reduced that overall by 20%, however difficulty could also be achieved by having more diverse enemies that don't deal immense damage. Why all the legion devils when you could for example have green and white dragonwings cc-ing players or rage drakes creating zones of control?
Thanks for your reply. Well, I never have ACT actually running for that very reason. I just use /combatlog 1 and import that into ACT later. Even if I'm neither capturing a video nor logging the encounters the performance is as can be seen in the video I posted earlier.
Now, as for difficulty - which was really hard to judge with all the problems going on:
I think the fight is in a much better state now.
less damage and more hp will be really annoying to low DPS classes like DC, OP and GF, already doing the content takes much more time than on other classes. Best way to do this would be transferring damage from non-avoidable(at least with higher ping) source like mob basic attacks(that have close to no tells and lock to the target) to an avoidable source - special attacks, special attacks are slow and often telegraphed, getting hit by this type of attack is only the players fault, and they can be evaded. this would level the playing field between squishy and tanky classes. atm squishy classes are in a disadvantage because of these unavoidable attacks dealing most of the damage, with more damage coming from special attacks it would be easier to squishies since they have more mobility/ways to nullify the attack(dodge, sprint, ItC, Fox), while it wouldnt affect tanky classes in any bad way - they are designed to take the hits anyway
this would also add more "action" to the game thats supposed to be action mmorpg. imho in action mmorpg with good enough reaction you should be able to fight about anything without taking a single hit(at least from the special attacks) check tera or vindictus for action combat done right
Troll olol olol olol. This should be fixed obv. ;D
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This is IMO the wrong way to go about this. It already takes my OP forever to do his dailies because his damage is so low. Sure, he doesn't die during it usually, but the amount of time it takes is tedious beyond belief.
The problem is in a lot of the just normal hits you take being so hard. Those are harder to avoid(See: Duelist's Flurry being suicidal half the time in solo content) and take too much. Big hits from big telegraphed attacks are another matter unless it's the all-too-common in some areas 'the floor is lava' where there's so much red at once you can't do anything but roll and run until you run out of stamina...
One big change would be making healing potions that are actually worthwhile and lowering the CD back to 12 seconds. 20k HP pots with a 12s cooldown would make soloing a lot easier for squishier classes that have no reliable way of in-combat healing. Currently I might as well not bother. 10k doesn't even undo one basic smack from a mob and by the time it comes off CD one side has died.
I don't think it'd affect dungeons much either, given how much enemies do there. 50k from a spitting spider in ToS, nevermind the rest of the mob group? Yeah, a 20k heal every 12 seconds isn't going to do anything against that. XD
10k every 18 seconds means that unless you can kill it before it kills you(Not at all a guarantee for all classes and the lower geared) you pretty much end up either unable to do anything or in a war of attrition where you might kill one or two before running back from the campfire.
Just adjusting that would go a long way to helping the squishier classes feel more competent in solo content. Tankier classes already don't rely much on pots anyway - My OP is currently Protection Justice and gets Templar's Wrath off CD often enough between Echoes of Light and the capstone that he rarely actually loses real HP as he does his dailies. Hell, he's a pathetically geared 2.1k IL and he can, if careful, solo half the 2-3 people HEs in Well of Dragons currently. (Though not IWD - Size and type of mob groups makes a difference) My TR on the other hand is already immediately into his much smaller health pool and will often run out of stamina and dazes before he gets far, with no way to reduce his very long cooldowns or reasonably heal taken damage.
I'd still like an official explanation as to why the potion cooldown was increased. To the best of my knowledge, there has never been one.
Spitting spiders and spiderlings can do a lot more than that. Try this on for size: getting one-shotted by a spiderling through 55.3% DR (from 18.6k defense). BAM, 100k HP gone just like that. How is that not unreasonably hard?
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Not all lvl 70s are created equal. That point was really driven home by the fact that my lvl 70 DC was the lowest ilvl I saw during the Tiamat test. There were other lvl 70s in there that had TWICE my ilvl. Basing monster damage/defense on character level is what is causing the "power creep". Of course someone with an ilvl of 3k or 4k is going to find all the content "too easy", while we, the plebians with sub 2k ilvl will find the content "too difficult".
Basing encounters on a character's ilvl will solve this "power creep" issue. Yes, I understand that I don't know anything about programming or program development, but there is most likely a way to throw in a subroutine of some sort that does a quick check of a character's ilvl, then adjusts the monster accordingly. Perhaps run the subroutine on each monster based on which character they are currently targeting. Will this introduce more lag? Possibly. But when I DMed, this is how I handled encounters... so if a human with some quick reference charts and graph paper can do it on the fly, there's no reason a computer can't do it in nanoseconds.
Others have been critical of my thoughts on this subject by saying it could be exploited. Ie. a character could simply remove their armor before going into the encounter, then once it has started, put their armor back on. Honestly, if someone wants to go through all that trouble to win, that's on them. But at some point, they will have to re-arm and armor themselves, and most likely take a great deal of damage in the process. Unless, of course, the monster subroutine is continuously checks ilvl, or randomly checks throughout the encounter.
From a logical standpoint, this is truly the only way to make this thing work.
To make things more equal for Tiamat, perhaps group instances, again, based in ilvl. 1800-2000, 2001-2200, 2201-2400, etc. That way you, the devs, could have mob and head difficulty already hard-programmed into the instance, and I imagine that would reduce any sort of "encounter check" lag as described above.
So flame on, you flamers of the NW forum. I'm just an idea guy.
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If difficulty is based on item level what will be the point in increasing it? If the difficulty stays the same regardless of it there just is no point of getting new gear anymore.
Very high spike damage from npcs is the only reason people invite tanks and healers in group content. If it doesn't kill a dps in one hit, people will just stack more lifesteal (up to 20% or more) and the game will be back to its pre mod 6 state, ie support is useless, and a dps race.
People not being able to stand in a yellow circle on the ground while the tank is building threat doesn't mean there's something wrong with the current level of damage.
I just wanted to let you know that it has always worked like this. The lightning breath chains, so if anyone is inside the red circle when it hits, someone outside the red circle but nearby can still be hit. I'm not sure about the chain radius or the number of times it chains, but it has always been the case since Tiamat was released in mod 5.
It used to be quite comedic when ppl would give up on a run and the main lightning strike would hit ppl on the stairs, so ppl in the lobby would unexpectedly get hit. LOL
Cheers.